Tag: domain names

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News

More group buying web sites, still more strange group buying domain names

Tuango

Group buying sites are launching everywhere.  Tuango, Montreal’s first group-buying site founded by Eduardo Mandri, is one of the latest entrants into the group buying market with a not-so-familiar name, but it’s not the only one using a catchy domain to brand its business – there are plenty. 

As more individuals and companies enter the group-buying business, there is a stronger likelihood the web sites will be using a catchy name over a premium generic name more relevant to its business model such as – daily bargains, or deal a day, or any number of the terms used to describe the group buying trend where people group together in order to get the best deals online.

I know I’ve covered this before, but not much has changed.  

Take for example an article published today in The Gazette entitled Group-buying making waves.  The story lists a number of new group buying startups in Canada, that at first glance seem sort of odd names for companies.  But  it’s not really that odd, considering the group buying market is crowded with all sorts of strange names.

Just take a look at some of the latest group buying startups mentioned in the news:

Coucoupon.com
Creation date: 19 Oct 2010

Grooster.com
Created on: 19 January 2010

Campusbargains.ca
Creation date:  5 November 2010

Suchthedeal.com
Creation date: 1 July 2010

Gaggleofchicks.com
Creation date: 8 April 2010

So why the change?

Are startups less worried about premium domain names and more focused on investing in different parts of their business? 

Are they cash-strapped? Do they even “get” domain names?

Or did Groupon change the domain market, at least for group buying sites with its use of “Groupon”? 

Whatever the reason, Groupon has done remarkably well since launching in 2008. 

According to Wikipedia: ‘ Groupon is experiencing phenomenal growth with a projected revenue of $500 million for 2010. No tech company (including Amazon, Ebay, Yahoo, or even Google) has experienced this kind of growth. At just under 2-years old in April of 2010, the company was valued at $1.35 billion.’

Categories
News Trademarks

Media giant Hearst Corporation acquires domain LittleAngels.com for $100,000

hearst tower

The news broke earlier this week on GreatDomains.com that the domain name LittleAngels.com sold for a whopping $100,000.  But until now, the new owners had remained a mystery. 

Earlier the registrant records switched from Sedo over to Hearst Corporation, one of the nation’s largest diversified media companies that owns 15 daily and 38 weekly newspapers, nearly 200 magazines around the world, 29 television stations, and has ownership in leading cable networks such as ESPN.

Now that the name has traded owners, what are the plans for the domain name: littleangels.com?

At the time of this story, littleangels.com is nothing more than a parked page at MelbourneIT.  But if you dig a little deeper, for example search trademarks on the United States Patent and Trademark Office, you’ll find that Hearst filed for the “LITTLE ANGELS” trademark back on July 26, 2010.

According to the filing, Little Angels will serve up: ‘Digital media, namely DVDs, videos and CDs featuring children’s audio visual programing and music; computer applications for mobile phones, namely downloadable children’s audio visual programing and music; sound recordings.’

‘Angels’ Domain Names

On a somewhat related note, littleangels.com isn’t the only big sale of an ‘angels’ domain in 2010.  Earlier this year, Angels.com was acquired for $200,000 by the MLB for its the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim web site.  The price tag put the sale in 37th place among the Top 100 sales of 2010, according to the current rankings at DN Journal.

While the DN Journal rankings don’t include littleangels.com yet, the sale price will rank it somewhere among the top 60 sales, tied with Prize.com, Cheesecake.com, and other domain names that sold for $100,000.

Categories
News

Twitter domain names and websites see strong sales on Flippa

increase my followers

Flippa, a marketplace for selling websites and domain names, is helping owners of Twitter-related domain names and websites see strong sales.  Flippa sellers have access to a huge crowd of buyers.  In October 2010, traffic to Flippa was nearly 250,000 unique visitors according to Compete. 

For sellers looking to be quickly rewarded for registering a Twitter domain or established web site, the figures are strong – especially compared to other recently ended sales reported by Flippa.

The sales today include:

Thetweetmaster.com won for $80
Twitterfollowersnow.net won for $100
Increasemyfollowers.com won for $1,750
Twitterfollowing.info won for $100

In March 2010, Flippa was credited with selling Retweet.com at public auction for $250,000 – it’s biggest sale since the site launched in 2009.  The company even published a case study about the sale entitled:  How Retweet.com was built then sold for $250K.

Tell us about the Retweet website sale.
We’ve only sold Retweet.com through Flippa. We originally planned to sell the website through a private broker, but later decided a competitive public auction was our best route for this domain.

We acquired (purchased) the domain during the explosion in the popularity of the Twitter.com platform.

Mesiab Labs had been building marketing software for Twitter for nearly 6 months when we saw the growing market demand for real time news and how Twitter was an essential tool in making this possible ( Hudson plane crash ).  Now since news spreads through Twitter by users retweet’ing stories, we figured retweet.com was the most appropriate name for such a service.

After the domain name was acquired we spent the next couple of months building it up as a side project. We worked with crowd-sourced designers (ed: 99designs.com ) and a few highly-skilled outsourced programmers to help complete the project while we focused on our ( Mesiab Labs ) bottom line.

The website began to grow organically after online blogs and other press announced the release of Retweet.com, the popular name created much buzz around the web ( positive and negative ).

What inspired you to sell Retweet?
The website eventually got to a point where we realized it obviously shouldn’t be a side project ( rather someone’s main focus ).  Since our expertise is in marketing software platforms, we felt that we had taken retweet.com as far as we could. This combined with our new focus on our latest startup company Jounce, Inc., we decided to sell.

The full case study can be read online at Flippa.

You can expect the Twitter sales to continue as Twitter continues to grow in numbers.

A few Twitter facts (updated September 14, 2010 on Twitter’s web site)
Twitter has 175 million registered users.
95M tweets are written per day.

Categories
News Video Games

German gaming portal Bigpoint acquires Ruined.com for $7,800 for its post apocalyptic third person shooter

ruined online

Bigpoint, one the largest German gaming portals and one of the top 3 gaming portals worldwide, has acquired Ruined.com from Sedo GreatDomains for its post apocalyptic third person shooter called ‘Ruined’.

Bigpoint originally used the domain name Ruinedonline.com for its site which debuted in October.

According to an article in Gamasutra: ‘Hamburg, Germany-based Bigpoint said that it’s adding 250,000 new registrations every day, and with the pending official launches of Battlestar Galactica and the company’s first U.S.-developed game Ruined Online, Bigpoint expects growth to continue.’

As of late October, the company claims to have over 150 million registered members of its browser-based games.

Bigpoint owns nearly 1,000 domain names for over 65 online games bundled on its game portal.

The company issued a press release about the launch of Ruined in early October:

Bigpoint Inc., the US-based subsidiary of Bigpoint GmbH (www.bigpoint.com) – a worldwide leader in online gaming – today unveiled its first browser game developed in North America. Set in a post-apocalyptic San Francisco, Ruined (www.ruinedonline.com) is a fast-paced, arena-style combat game that includes high-end features common to traditional console games.

“We came to the United States to extend and optimize our existing portfolio of games and to create new titles specifically for this market,” said Heiko Hubertz, CEO and Founder, Bigpoint. “With Ruined, we believe we’ve taken a huge step forward in producing a game that looks and feels like something you get with console and PC games, but requires nothing more than a browser to play.”

While still in early development, Bigpoint is showing-off a playable demo at the Game Developers Conference Online in Austin, Texas this week. In its current form, the game includes two arenas based on well-known San Francisco landmarks. Players can select one of three characters and engage in a deathmatch against other live players.

In developing Ruined – which is being built atop the Unity 3 engine – Bigpoint has partnered with dSonic Inc., an award-winning audio production company, and Cinematico Inc., a full service 3D design, animation, and motion capture studio. Bigpoint selected these firms to achieve a high-caliber experience for hardcore gamers.

Bigpoint is targeting this winter to release an open beta of the game. At that time, three more characters, additional San Francisco-inspired arenas, and multiple game modes will be available. In addition, the game will include 3D positional and stereo sound, including voice chat.

For more information about Ruined, including character back-stories and 3D scenes from the game, and to sign-up for the game newsletter, please visit: www.ruinedonline.com.

Categories
News

Still Working on Updating the Fusible Web Site

Last month we switched Fusible.com from a custom-built web site to WordPress, a much needed makeover.  The move to WordPress gives us access to hundreds of thousands of plug-ins and tools and gives us the flexibility to make changes without paying  for development costs to perform routine maintenance or upgrades.

This is a progressive task, that should take another few weeks as we manually upload hundreds of stories to the new platform here on WordPress. 

Everything will return to normal, including our coverage of the Domain Industry, once we have finished.

When we’re short on time, it’s challenging to get stories posted, so if you have ideas, send all your Domain Story tips to webmaster at fusible dot com or submit your story tip here.